Considering the closeness of the race and the bizarrely-permissible tasking of her opponent with presiding over its results, Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams is all too well advised to do exactly what she is doing: forestall concession to recusal-resistant Secretary of State Brian Kemp until every last vote is counted. While she’s at it, though, there is something more that Abrams should do, and she owes it to herself and to Georgia to do it now.

Abrams should stand up, throw her head and shoulders back, and pull herself up like a great wall of rectitude. And in the strongest, clearest-possible voice she should declaim: “I call for a full investigation of the allegations recently made by Secretary Kemp that the Democratic Party had hacked into our state voter-registration system. I do not believe that there is any substance to these allegations. But the integrity of our elections is too important to leave to any one person or party. If there is a legitimate shadow to be cast on my own side of the aisle, let it be cast, so the system itself can shine clean and bright for all Georgians to see and believe.”

With that statement, Abrams would come across as – and, in fact, be – a champion of voting rights for all; more mindful of the sacred electoral process than of her own prospects in it; just as disturbed by any possible tampering with Kemp’s votes as by tampering with her own. More deliciously, she would also present Kemp with the problem of what to do with whatever conclusion such an investigation came to: Either he chose to ball up serious but unfounded allegations and throw them at Abrams for his own gain. Or – I'm guessing not, but who knows? -- the voter-registration system was indeed hacked, meaning that the system was hackable….on his watch.

Granted, none of this would do a thing to bring Kemp’s total below the 50-per-cent-plus-one threshold required to avoid a runoff. But on the off chance that such a runoff were to take place, it would make it a whole lot more interesting.